


Silent Paints

by Sanoiro



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: & Absence, Angst, F/M, Hurt, coping with loss, post 4x10
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-26
Updated: 2019-06-26
Packaged: 2020-05-20 03:47:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19369222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sanoiro/pseuds/Sanoiro
Summary: There is an eerie silence in Dan's life since Charlotte's passing but now it's more profound than ever after Lucifer disappeared from Chloe's life.It only takes a room to realise that the definition of silence is not soundlessness.





	Silent Paints

**Author's Note:**

> After 4x10 I had this one-shot idea and as I've had some time today here it is. It's the foundation of Deckerstar perhaps from Dan's eyes in the aftermath of S4 finale.

 

**Silent Paints**

 

* * *

 

 

  
Every day has become uncommonly quiet.

It has been almost a year now since Charlotte’s passing and that overpowering silence in Dan’s life is still changing shapes. Chloe’s absence for a month with Trixie in Europe was a variation of that.

So the days pass with a melancholic almost, lack of noise as life itself has opted to remain tight-lipped.

“Weird,” Dan whistles making the occasional unsuspecting officer jump and glare at him.

Sometimes he likes to break the long days with a letter, a word even a whistle without any real meaning or purpose. Chloe remains quiet. She is always quiet. She is simply not there anymore but the cases are closing, Trixie is troubled but thriving, they all smile and Dan hates to admit he knows that facade. He sees it in the mirror every day after all.

“What is?” Trixie asks gathering her school bag, taking a hesitant step towards her mother only to stop and start climbing the stairs instead.

“Nothing monkey,” he pacifies her and with a last glance at a waving Chloe they drive back at the empty apartment his ex and daughter now live alone.

He often wonders how she can afford it on her own now that Maze has moved out but as if aware of his question Chloe smiles and downs her head to whatever paperwork she insists on getting lost in.

“It’s nothing to concern yourself with,” she claims biting her inner cheek, hand worrying whatever she stubbornly hides under her shirt.

Dan wonders if what she grasps tightly offers the answer he inquires. One of the many, perhaps all of them. 

Months have passed and the precinct is liveness. First Dan assumes it’s his perception of the world now. It’s gloomy and unforgiving but when his eyes scan the floor from his tucked in the corner and next to the stairs desk, it is apparent he is not the only one out of place.

The proprietor of all his woes is gone and although feeling relieved and victorious, dread sets in. There are no hard truths to be told, no distractions to be given.

It happened overnight. Little Charlie was found but Big Bad Lucifer disappeared and with him Dan’s normalcy. The pranks, the mental slaps, the hard stares that warned him he was going too far knowing that something rotten bloomed within the lost Detective.

“So how was your day?” He asks the child and gets only a shrug for an answer. His attempt to win the silence is defeated before taking its very first step. 

“Come on you surely have _something_ to say!” Dan almost demands a spoken word to light the dark room he has found himself in. He is shaking not with anger but out of fear for the next monster he will encounter in this self-inflicted darkness.

Trixie gaze is unyielding, there is nothing to be said but her eyes then trail to the stairs, brows arching. Still refusing to speak she nibbles the last of her pizza slice.

Since when has this veil taken over his life? Where is the chattering Trixie, her laughing or at least reprimanding mother? Where have the words disappeared? Yet it’s not the words, it’s the sound that is gone. For where there is sound, there is an admission that what was normal almost three years ago, it is not anymore.

“Mum is always locked in Maze's room,” the child finally utters swallowing the last bite of her early dinner.  
  
At scarily ten, his daughter retires in her room not willing to invest in any other verbal exchange. It is not evidence of pre-teen moodiness but disconnection so privacy be damned Dan decides to forcefully reshuffle the playing deck. And so he mixes cards he does not own or even knows how to play with. 

The door is locked.

His palm rests on the frame and he considers how far he can go with this. The crashing shoulder that almost unhinges the door offers a sudden relief. The loud cracking noise that fills the apartment provides an unparallel catharsis as Dan’s ears start picking up the little sounds again.

The chirping of the birds, the flapping at the win's whims drapes, two little feet climbing hurriedly up the stairs, his heart thundering within his ribs. He had forgotten how loud his blood could rush or how stillness could unexpectedly fall like a blinding mist over them muting everything again.

“What the… Hell?” He murmurs taking in the hoarding variations of colour before his eyes. 

They are loud, bold, piercing overwhelming his sight and hearing. That's where all the sound has been stored away from the prying eyes. 

The bed is toppled at the far wall of the room acting as a makeshift ladder, the mattress in the middle of the room as a shrine’s pulpit. As if everything around it awaits for the worshiper's words to come to life or peacefully be dissolved in the morning light. Out of sight, out of mind but not _him_. Never Lucifer. So Chloe has decided to make sure she remembers every detail. 

The window lets in a breeze but is not adequately helping to clear the heady odour of paint, cigars and liquor. There are just two bottles near the mattress, only one of them opened and not even half empty, while no glasses can be found. 

The whisky is obviously carefully rationed as perhaps it should be. The label is expensive, the lingering aroma of smoky decay blended with ethereal and woody tones is heavy, perhaps even comforting as it envelopes you. Not him, _her_. He is lying so comforting for  _both_ it is. 

It is the same scent as the best scotch Dan has ever tasted. What Lucifer had given him generously access to - _two_ glasses - after feigning a spectacular breathy resurrection before Dan's eyes. 

He had been tempted to buy a bottle afterwards only to come across a five, almost six, figure price tag. It was not worth it, he had convinced himself grumbly then. So it is no wonder if he had been in possession of two bottles Dan reasons that he would savour it slowly as well. However, he suspects that this reluctance to take perhaps more than a swing has nothing to do with liking scotch or making sure every buck has thoroughly been enjoyed.

It could have been a gift, an expensive one by her superfluous partner. A _parting_ gift or Chloe's claim of ownership over a shared past. An abruptly interrupted future if there ever was one. The packs of cigars, carefully stacked near the bottles speak of the second.

The cheap tin ashtray is full with some cigar butts probing out. Filters clean, not one betrays a single inhalation. They were just left to burn, adding to what was the first thing everyone remarked about Chloe’s partner. His love for a smoke and a drink at any time, at any place.

“She just misses Lucifer,” Trixie sounds eased now, liberated to finally address the Devil in the room because that’s what it is. A Devil, an Angel, a Man painted by a woman in love.  _Everywhere_.

There are lines of black coal and cigarette ash on papers and canvas. Sometimes they appear agitated, others soothly smeared in dejection, in consolation, in grief, in joy. Where borders suffocated the artist she has gone beyond them. On walls and on the floor. On the haphazardly open window giving the painted figure an empyreal sunray halo.

“No,” he is now aware of what is happening before his eyes.

The brushes are gentle and delicate but also vengeful. Chloe has bared him raw in her depictions as she unsurfaced him on the white canvas, on the wall. Wings of feathers and leather escape him painfully thrusting both the artist and the muse to a new reality. A singularity solely theirs. 

A side of him is always half hidden and at the same time, Lucifer is always there, open at how the mother of his child sees her partner. A coalesce of crimson and unadulterated white. Of soft honest browns and vulnerable twinkling maroon. A man in shreds, a _lovable_ man against all odds. And Dan understands. 

Not the love, he cannot fathom that love but the pain. That continuous howling agony. 

“She mourns,” he acknowledges the numbing effect of pain along with the loss of the senses it causes.

Trixie attempts to enter the room and Dan catches her by the shoulder. They should not intrude into this space. There is no man, no body or reason but this room is him and is accessible only to her as the actual Lucifer always was. Only discerned by the one person who cared to look and understand.

From the splatters of paint to the wrinkled purple shirt half buried under the pillow this is a psyche’s massacre. Still throbbing and bleeding its torment over the harrowing loss.

A light hand rests on Dan’s back catching him by surprise but as Chloe studies the violation of her privacy, she smiles.

Coming between him and Trixie she reaches with a steady hand the handle of the now angrily creaking door and shuts it close.

The darkness fills the corridor and so the ear-splitting silence of pain is resumed.

 

**The End**

 

* * *

 

 

As I was editing this piece I remembered an old song... Well not that old but still:

[Paint The Silence - South ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qIyUpCPVkI)


End file.
